Learn how to make a sourdough starter recipe from scratch with just flour and water. This versatile ingredient can be used to make breads, cakes, cookies, and so much more.
If you hang around the traditional foods community, chances are you have heard of making homemade sourdough starter from scratch.
I have had my homemade starter for over six years now. It is vital in my traditional food kitchen.
What Is A Sourdough Starter?
A sourdough starter is a live active culture made of fermented flour and water that is full of beneficial bacteria and yeasts.
It is used as a way to ferment recipes and naturally rise bread.
Why You Will Love Sourdough:
If you are unfamiliar, let me fill you in on all the reasons why crazy folks, like me, go through the effort of handcrafting, and maintaining, a beneficial colony of yeasts and bacteria in their kitchens.
Before yeast was isolated and sold in little packets, sourdough starter was a valuable commodity in homes and families, passed down for generations.
Health Benefits
Have you ever heard of phytic acid? Basically, it’s an antinutrient found in grains, beans, and nuts that interferes with the absorption of certain nutrients. They are present on grains to keep them from spoiling.
There is a reason they are there, but there is also good evidence that our bodies weren’t meant to handle them. Proper preparation of grains eliminates most, if not all, of the phytic acid in offending foods.
This is the very reason traditional cultures soaked and fermented their grains, seeds, and beans. These days, we’ve lost that art. And what have we found? People can’t handle grains anymore.
Instead of using instant yeast packets, people in traditional cultures leavened their bread with a fermented starter that captured all the yeasts in the environment.
AKA Sourdough starter
How on earth do we capture native yeasts? Read on, because I explain how to make your very own starter.
Because I love good food
I already confessed my foodie tendencies with you all. I reckon it’s the same inclination that led me into the world of homemade sourdough.
Locally made sourdough starter, with the native yeasts of the area present, is certainly the thing a foodie’s dreams are made of. A jar of healthy, productive starter is teaming with life, as evidenced by all the bubbles you will see rising to the surface.
Once you’ve experienced homemade sourdough baked goods, store-bought breads and pancakes simply don’t cut it. Sourdough has a depth of flavor that just can’t be found in something made quickly with a packet of instant yeast.
This post contains affiliate links, which means I make a small commission at no extra cost to you. See my full disclosure here.
FAQ:
How long does it take to make sourdough starter?
It takes about a week to create an active sourdough starter, but sometimes it can take about two weeks to make a starter ready to bake bread.
Do you have to discard sourdough starter every time you feed it?
When you are first creating your sourdough starter, yes. If you don’t discard you will have so much starter that it will be hard to keep healthy. This is because the more starter you have the more flour and water you will need to add for the yeasts and bacteria to feed on.
After having a starter for a while rather than discarding you can just use it in discard recipes. This is a much more useful way of removing some of the starter rather than throwing it in the trash.
How do you know your sourdough starter is ready to use?
You will know your sourdough starter is read to use when you feed it and after 4-12 hours it doubles in size and is super bubbly. A good way to be able to determine this, is to place a rubber band where the top of the starter is after you feed it. Then after a few hours have passed you can see just how high it has grown.
Another way is to perform the float test. Take a small glass of room temperature water. Add a quarter sized dollop of active starter. If it floats, it is ready to bake with. If it doesn’t it is not active enough.
Sourdough Starter Recipe:
By now, you know why you want to have a bowl of sourdough starter bubbling away in your kitchen, but how the heck do you make one?
Ingredients
Flour (Whole grain wheat, unbleached all-purpose, and einkorn are all great choices.)
Filtered water (I use a Berkey water filter. We have the Royal size for our family of 7. You can find my full Berkey review HERE.)
Tools
Glass bowl (Metal can react with beneficial bacteria and yeasts.)
Tea towel
How To Make Sourdough Starter
Day 1:
On day one, mix one cup of flour and one cup filtered water. Stir vigorously, making sure to scrape down the sides and incorporate everything. Place a clean tea towel over the bowl and set aside. Allow it to sit for 24 hours.
Day 2:
On day two, discard half of the mixture and repeat the process. Add one cup flour, one cup water, stir vigorously, and cover.
Why do you have to remove half the mixture? By day four, you would have sourdough starter overflowing from your bowl. Also, removing half ensures that the right amount of flour and water is feeding the growing colony of beneficial yeast. If you weren’t discarding half, the cup of flour wouldn’t be enough to feed them on days three and four. Basically, you would end up with a lot of extra starter by the end of the process, and none of it would be mature.
Day 3-5
Repeat the day two instructions for days three, four, and five.
Day 6-7
On days six and seven, do the same but feed it every 12 hours, instead of every 24.
By day seven, there should be enough beneficial bacteria and yeast present to bake sourdough bread and other fermented sourdough goodies, like pancakes and english muffins.
You will know it’s working if it bubbles, and doubles in size.
Sourdough Starter Maintenance
Once your sourdough starter is alive and active, there will be some maintenance to keep it going for years and years.
In the refrigerator for occasional use
Storing it in the refrigerator slows down the fermentation process, so one feeding per week, or every other week, is sufficient.
I usually use my starter a couple times per week. If I plan to make pancakes Saturday morning, for example, I will pull my starter out of the fridge Friday morning and add flour and water. By Saturday morning it is bubbly and ready to go.
I remove the two cups of starter needed for my pancake recipe, and put the “master starter” back in the fridge. Since it was fed the day before, it is good to go for another week, or whenever I need it next.
On the counter for daily use
Since the “little guys”, as my kids like to call the bacteria in the starter, are active at room temperature, they will have to be fed more often if keep it in this state.
If you leave your starter out on the counter, you will need to add flour and water every day. You will also have to be baking every day to use up all that starter.
Most people probably won’t use the starter quite so much, unless you own and operate a bakery. I would recommend storing it in the refrigerator between uses.
Helpful Resources
Every day I get loads of questions about sourdough starter, so I devoted a whole post called, How to Care for Sourdough Starter filled with your questions and my answers. You can use this post a reference guide.
Thank you so much for stopping by the farmhouse! I hope this is just the beginning of our sourdough journey.
Check out my other sourdough recipes and posts
- Sourdough English Muffins
- Sourdough Pizza Crust
- Healthy One Pot Meal- Sourdough Skillet
- Sourdough Tortillas
- Easy Sourdough Focaccia
- Dry Sourdough Starter
If you try this recipe and love it, I would love if you gave it 5 stars! Also, tag me on Instagram @farmhouseonboone.
Sourdough Starter
Ingredients
- Flour, Whole grain wheat, unbleached all purpose, and einkorn are all great choices.
- Filtered water
Instructions
- On day one, mix one cup of flour and one cup filtered water. Stir vigorously, making sure to scrape down the sides and incorporate everything. Place a clean tea towel over the bowl and set aside. Allow it to sit for 24 hours.
- On day two, discard half of the mixture and repeat the process. Add one cup flour, one cup water, stir vigorously, and cover.
- Repeat the day two instructions for days three, four, and five.
- On days six and seven, do the same but feed it every 12 hours, instead of every 24.
- By day seven, there should be enough beneficial bacteria and yeast present to bake sourdough bread and other fermented sourdough goodies, like pancakes and english muffins. You will know it’s working if it bubbles, and doubles in size.
Notes
Sourdough Starter Maintenance
- Once your sourdough starter is alive and active, there will be some maintenance to keep it going for years and years.
In The Refrigerator For Occasional Use
- Storing it in the refrigerator slows down the fermentation process, so one feeding every week, or every other week, is sufficient.
- I usually use my starter a couple times per week. If I plan to make pancakes Saturday morning, for example, I pull my starter out of the fridge Friday morning and add flour and water. By Saturday morning it is bubbly and ready to go. I remove the two cups of starter needed for my pancake recipe and put the “master starter” back in the fridge. Since it was fed the day before, it is good to go for another week, or whenever I need it next.
On The Counter For Daily Use
- Since the “little guys”, as my kids like to call the bacteria in the starter, are active at room temperature, they will have to be fed more often if kept in this state.
- If you leave your starter out on the counter, you will need to add flour and water every day. You will also have to be baking daily to use up all that starter.
- Most people probably won’t use the starter quite so much, unless you own and operate a bakery. I would recommend storing it in the refrigerator between uses.
Nutrition information is automatically calculated, so should only be used as an approximation.
At any point, should you switch over to white flour instead of whole wheat flour for your starter? That was recommended by some friends of mine and I think I ruined it!
Yes, you can. I would start by slowing mixing it in over the course of several days.
I have people tell me I can’t use RO water. That is all I have been using for my starter and it is bubbly and I have been baking bread etc with it just fine. It is this true and am I missing something by using this water. We don’t have a RO that adds minerals back in. Thank you!
I’ve never had issues with RO water. Tap water is usually a big no no, but not RO!
How do you make the actual bread after making the sourdough starter?
Here’s a link to an easy to make bread https://www.farmhouseonboone.com/no-knead-sourdough-bread
On day 6-7 you said into feed every 12 hours do you still want to discard half every 12 hours with the feed?
Yes!
Once you put it in the fridge.and yiu feed it once a week, do you still pour out half and make more?
No, you will begin using it in your recipes. You’ll just feed it and then use it in your recipes.
My starter never got thick. It remains a liquid consistency and does not pass the float test. I’m wondering if maybe the temperature in my house isn’t warm enough (we keep it about 65-68).
It could be temperature related. It also sounds like it needs more flour in your mixture. You want to make sure that it looks like a thick pancake batter!
Hi! Have a question about the sourdough starter. I am on day eight and my starter doesn’t pass the float test. I have followed the instructions and what I am seeing is it doublednin size around day 4 and was bubbley. Nownit is bubbley but doesnt ever double in size. It stays at the same level. What am dòing wrong? What do i need to do? Should I start over? Thanks for your help.
Are you feeding it twice a day? You might need to pause on feeding it twice a day and make sure that it is rising. Keep going. It can take up to two weeks for your starter to be functional.
I just have a question – I am following this recipe and am on Day 3, if the discard is not mature enough yet for bread, what can I do with it? Is it useful for anything other than starting another batch of sourdough starter or should I just dump it? I appreciate your time!
I usually dump it in the beginning days of making a sourdough starter.
I’ve always been afraid of sourdough starters and the amount to discard and what to do with it and keeping it going. This makes it sound so much easier. Your process is in simple terms for my simple mind. Thank you, Jayne
Glad you’re having success!
I have followed your instructions faithfully. On day 5 I saw some bubbles and rise. Stirred it, discarded 1/2,fed it, and nothing. Today is day seven and still nothing. I don’t know what went wrong or how to correct it. Please advise.
It may take more time. Especially during the winter when the house tends to be cooler. Keep feeding and discarding, eventually it will come alive.
I’m thinking mine might also need more time. Should I feed every 12 or 24 hours after day 7? Also, I didn’t use whole wheat flour just all-purpose unbleached. Is that the problem?
It problem does need more time. Are you noticing a rise before you feed it for the second time in the day? If not, I would just feed it once per 24 hours to give it that extra time to rise. It can take up to two weeks.